


A Door to Somewhere

by suitesamba



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism, Reincarnation, Retirement, growing older, time play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23152096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: Sherlock and John have a different kind of meeting.  Twice.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 19
Kudos: 135





	A Door to Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> A short experimental type of piece that is kind of enigmatic. John and Sherlock meet, have adventures, grow old together, die, then try it all over again.

It happens sometimes – you can’t prevent it, no matter how inconvenienced you may feel. Minding your own business in your own flat, perhaps watching television, or reading a book, or cooking your dinner, or soaking in the bath. The door opens, no matter that you locked it – you’re quite sure you locked it – and the person on the other side blinks in confusion, glances round the room trying to sort things out, or stares at you as if you’re a great ogre or a six-legged alien. They always back right out again, sometimes without uttering a word, and sometimes with a fumbled apology, or a stifled scream and usually with a look of utter confusion, as if they expected to walk into a clinic’s examining room and got you instead.

It might be your front door, or the door to the loo, or to your bedroom. It doesn’t seem to matter where in the flat you are – they always find the closest door to intrude on your privacy. And even though the intrusions last only a matter of seconds most times, they’re disruptive, and inconvenient, but most of all they make you question your own sanity.

Sherlock Holmes, London’s only consulting detective, has become accustomed to them since he’s moved here to 221B. He’s proud of his orderly, organized mind, his generally superior intellect, his grasp of scientific principles, and despite the abuse he’s imposed on his body these past years, and the mind-altering substances he no longer uses but still craves, he does not believe he’s insane, or hallucinating. These things happen sometimes in the universe, things that simply can’t be explained. They don’t happen to him, of course, but he’s read accounts of ghosts and spirits and inexplicable occurrences that happen to other people. A subset of humanity believes in alien abductions, and time travel, and parallel universes. A much larger component believes in a rich, idyllic afterlife. And while his great intellect can sort out paradoxes and puzzles, it simply cannot explain the presence of a gentleman in swimming shorts staring at him through his bedroom door, or an elderly woman’s shocked expression as she opens the bathroom door to find him standing there naked, shaving his face.

They’re not ghosts from the past, though. Their dress is quite modern, and definitely western, and if they utter a word, it’s usually in a language he understands. He’s learned to be a very quick study – rapid observation, immediate deductions. Cab driver, delivery man, cellist, serial murderer – that one was quite a surprise. But all of them – one and all – surprised to find themselves in his flat. They always close the door and disappear, and when he opens the door himself, the expected room or corridor is always just outside it.

The frequency of their appearance is irregular and totally unpredictable. He’s charted the dates and times and locations, what he’d had to eat – or drink – that day. The phase of the moon. The barometric pressure. His temperature and blood pressure. Astronomical occurrences. How much sleep he’d had the night before – if indeed, he’d slept at all. Air quality. Pollen count. Gender of the visitor. Age. Clothing. Reaction. Number of seconds the door remained open. Nothing correlates. 

Had he not been such a believer in the order and disorder of the world, he’d have thought he was losing his mind. But there is an explanation, perhaps not one he’ll accept, or even understand, and as he goes about his consulting work with New Scotland Yard, and with the occasional private client, he churns through theories. An elaborate psychological experiment masterminded by his brother. A just-as-elaborate practical joke. A hallucinogenic effect of drugs he’s ingested unknowingly – see “elaborate psychological experiment.” From there he’s left with all the impossibilities – parallel universes, time travel, ghosts. 

In time, he understands that _where_ is likely more relevant than _who_. These visits don’t occur in hotels, or at his parents’ home on his infrequent visits there. He’s never been popped in on while using the loo at Bart’s. They happen only at 221B. If Mrs. Hudson downstairs has unexplained visitors, she’s never said, though he’s never said either, aside from the first time it happened and he naturally assumed Mrs. Hudson had sent a client up, but she denied it emphatically and looked at him oddly.

He’d checked the door just after, of course. Locked, naturally.

There are other curiosities he’s noted in his charts. There is always a gap of several seconds between his eyes acknowledging that the door has opened and a stranger is standing there and his brain sending a message to his mouth or his body to _do something._ He finds that his mouth is often open, ready with a “Stop!” or a “Wait!” when the door closes but that the sound never issues. And while his body can react – a turn of his head, or jerking his head up quickly from microscope or journal – he can’t jump to his feet or move toward the door. Not fast enough, anyway.

He's stuck in a holding pattern – charting everything but unable to make any reasonable conclusions, when one day, it happens to him.

 _He_ is the one opening the door.

The door to the loo, no less, or what he hopes is the loo in this tangle of stuffy corridors and lavishly appointed offices in his brother’s office building. The sign indicating that this door does indeed lead to the loo is a brass plate with the letters WC engraved on it and the whole thing is not much larger than a postage stamp. He turns the knob and pushes the door open but before his foot crosses the threshold, he stops abruptly. Something is off – the smell, the lighting, the amount of space opening up before him.

Someone is in the room – someone sitting on a narrow bed against the far wall. Someone dressed in dark trousers and a black and white plaid button down. Short blonde hair, back erect, walking cane leaning against the bed, which is crisply made with military precision.

There is a handgun o the bed beside him. Sherlock glances at it – a Browning Hi-Power.

The man looks up at him. Sherlock watches his hand twitch, can almost see his effort to open his mouth and say something, to jerk his body into motion. He stands there watching, frozen in place, and doesn’t close the door. Doesn’t close the door even as the man finally manages to get to his feet. He fumbles for his cane and, eyes never leaving Sherlock’s, slowly advances a step. Another. A third.

Instinctively, Sherlock backs up.

“No – don’t.”

The other man has found his voice. Sherlock freezes. His hand is still on the doorknob, his eyes on the man as he stops walking, pausing only steps away from him.

“Where are you?” the man asks. His voice is rough with disuse and tinged with disbelief. “No – strike that. What did you think you’d find behind this door?”

“The loo,” Sherlock answers. His grip on the doorknob tightens. “In my brother’s office building. On Whitehall.”

“On Whitehall.” The man – solider, Sherlock’s brain supplies – repeats the words. He is on edge. Past curious. Intensely cautious.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” Sherlock asks.

“London,” the man corrects. “Nowhere near Whitehall, of course.”

“No – you’ve been invalided out. Recently. Afghanistan or Iraq?”

The man stares at Sherlock. He doesn’t answer the question, though a smile flits briefly across his face. He finds comfort in Sherlock’s question, in the validation of his identity.

“You’re not like all the others,” he says. 

“I’m not?” Sherlock glances around the room – a bedsit. Sparse and sterile. He doesn’t let his eyes linger on the gun on the bed.

“No.” His fingers twitch atop the cane. “You’re still here.”

Sherlock focuses on the man, on the one person in all this world who may hold the answers his brain has refused to provide. “This has happened before. Here. In this room.” It is not a guess. “Always this door?”

The man glances to the left, toward a door that undoubtedly leads to the loo. “No. Not always,” he murmurs, then turns his eyes back to Sherlock. “You…?”

Sherlock forms the words carefully, both reluctant and relieved to admit it. “For some time now. In my flat.”

“You’ve had visitors.”

“That’s what you call them?” Sherlock asks. “Visitors?”

“Yeah. Visitors. Visitors who don’t actually visit.” The man laughs dryly. He stares at Sherlock and blinks. “You’re still here.”

Sherlock nods. “Still here,” he confirms.

“Real then.”

Possibilities dance through Sherlock’s head and he analyses and sorts each as it occurs to him. “Do you have a mobile?”

The man reaches into his pocket and extracts a device that looks far too high-end for someone who lives in a utilitarian bedsit.

“Phone me,” Sherlock says, then rattles off the number. The man gives him the oddest smile – half indulgent, half amazement – as he complies, pressing in the numbers and waiting, expectantly, until Sherlock’s own mobile, in his own pocket, begins to sound.

Sherlock removes the mobile, glances at it before thumbing it off again.

“Well then….” He pockets the phone and looks up at the man, taking in his military stance, the precision of his haircut, the way his shoes are lined up beside each other beside the bed. 

Sherlock takes a step back and opens the door a bit wider. 

“You’re a doctor – an army doctor.”

The other man nods slowly. “Yes. How could you possibly know that?”

“Consulting detective. “Any good?

“Very good.” The man stands up straighter. “And what the hell is a consulting detective?”

“The police call me in when they’re out of their element.” Sherlock shrugs. “You’ve seen a lot injuries, then? Violent deaths?”

“Yes. But the police don’t hire….”

“Bit of trouble too, then?”

He sighs and gives it up. “Of course. Enough for a lifetime.”

“Want to see some more?”

Tension drops away from the man’s body. Sherlock imagines it’s like opening one’s eyes after a long sleep, stepping into Oz and seeing the world in color again. “Oh God, yes.”

Sherlock smiles – the first genuine smile he’s smiled in years, and the other man walks toward him and without pause, passes through the doorway, flesh and blood and bone and not a specter, into Mycroft’s building. 

They stare at each other in the corridor while the door snicks shut behind them.

“John Watson.” The man extends a hand to Sherlock.

“Sherlock Holmes.”

“I’ve left my coat and wallet behind.”

“And your gun.”

“Ah. Right.” John looks down to hide a smile, then back at the door that’s closed behind them. “And you never did use the loo.”

“No, I didn’t, did I?”

Sherlock puts his hand on the doorknob, pauses to look at John, then pulls open the door to be greeted with exactly what one might expect – a rather posh loo. 

“I suppose you’ll have to lend me cab fare then,” John says as Sherlock flips on the light and excuses himself.

He waits outside patiently, tapping his cane on the floor beside his foot, watching a CCTV camera in the corner make lazy and seemingly random passes. 

The door to the loo pushes open and Sherlock emerges. He hardly pauses as he slips by John and heads down the corridor, but John hesitates. He watches Sherlock for a moment, then pulls open the door just enough to look inside.

It’s not the loo, and it’s not his bedsit. It’s a flat he’s never seen, furnished chaotically, every surface piled high with books and magazines. Index cards are stuck to a wall, some of them impaled with what look like Samurai knives, and someone appears to have shot holes through the wallpaper. A suit coat and plum-coloured shirt are draped over the back of the most comfortable chair he’s ever seen. Oddly, there doesn’t appear to be anyone at home.

Sherlock has reached the end of the corridor, but he looks back to see John with the door open again and gets a glimpse of the chaos within. 

He sprints back and stares into the familiar disorder of his sitting room at 221B Baker Street. John is staring at the human skull on the mantel and Sherlock smiles in delight as he steps around John and his foot crosses the threshold.

“Sherlock Holmes! Look at this place!” 

It’s Mrs. Hudson, coming in from the stairs, dust rag in hand. She stops in the doorway near the front door and stares at him disapprovingly, eyes widening as John steps into the room behind Sherlock. She looks from Sherlock to John, then from John to Sherlock. The puzzled look on her face disappears and is replaced by a look that John has no problem interpreting.

“Not gay,” he says with a wave. 

“Of course you’re not, dear,” she says, giving him a cheeky smile as she faces Sherlock, hands on her hips. “Oh, Sherlock! You’ve brought home a friend!”

She seems inordinately pleased, and Sherlock introduces Dr. John Watson, and Mrs. Hudson tells him she’s not their housekeeper but wouldn’t he like some tea and she’ll be back up in a trice.

When she’s gone downstairs, Sherlock wanders into the kitchen and John tries out the chair to see if it’s as comfortable as it looks.

It is.

John gives up his bedsit and moves into 221B the day after he and Sherlock meet on opposite sides of the door. He slips the Browning into the drawer of his bedside table and it feels like the home he’s never had.

In the years that follow, doors typically open to expected places. Loos, offices, hotel rooms, pubs, warehouses where criminals are hiding the bodies. Visitors, as John once called them, stop coming to 221B, though on occasion, Sherlock and John open a door at exactly the right time to avoid a madman, and then, on what is easily the most memorable day of their lives, after Sherlock pretended to die and left John for far too long, John opens a restaurant door, engagement ring for his lover in his pocket, to find himself staring at Sherlock half-dead on a narrow cot in a cell in Serbia. 

He doesn’t hesitate and is at Sherlock’s side in seconds, not caring that the door swings shut behind him. He practically carries him back to the door, praying the prayer of the unbeliever as he reaches for the handle and inches it open.

221B greets them. It’s silent as a tomb, the furniture enshrined in dust-covered sheets. They stumble through and John drags them both to Sherlock’s bedroom. They fall together onto the stripped-down bed and cling to each other in relief, holding tight to solid belief beneath their fingertips.

He doesn’t return to Mary, doesn’t need any more proof that the doors know his heart even better than he does.

Life after is better even than life before. There are fewer short-cuts, fewer doors to somewhere, now that they’ve claimed each other and move about together more often than not. They roll through life side by side, in sickness and in health, taking the steps more slowly, leaving the rooftop chases to the younger cops, lingering after cases over pints or coffee with Lestrade, continuing to perplex Mycroft. Though he continues to chart, as a matter of habit, Sherlock has reached a point of acceptance, and puts his great mind to use where problems have answers because really, is their wholly unbelievable situation really a problem at all?

One lovely Sunday afternoon, after a bout with the flu and another struggle with regulating Sherlock’s thyroid medication, they wake from a nap and when Sherlock opens their bedroom door are presented with the sitting room of a cozy cottage. The sun is shining through large, clear windows that face the not-so-distant sea and there’s a fire burning in the hearth and two comfortable-looking chairs facing it.

It’s every bit as inviting as it looks, and they slide sideways into retirement in Sussex without hoopla or fanfare. 

It doesn’t happen again for a long, long time. The years have been trying, but not unkind. Friends have passed on, and they’ve each battled cancer and won. John is getting forgetful, which worries Sherlock, and worries John as well, but they get by together in the snug cottage near the sea, and John reads detective stories – sometimes twice – and works crossword puzzles and warms his feet by the fire. Sherlock does the cooking now, and keeps his mind sharp with the cold case files from his friends at the Yard, and on sunny days takes John’s arm as they walk together in the garden. 

John is the first to go, and Sherlock is left alone.

Alone, except for the visitors, who have made their appearance again.

They intrude on him when he’s having his tea or sitting in the garden with the newspaper. The door opens and a startled looking man peeks in on him, then hurriedly closes the door. He’s getting out of the tub, stepping carefully onto the mat, when the door to the bathroom swings open and an elderly woman gazes at him in shock, then pulls the door shut again. Once he is sleeping and the cupboard door opens to a young woman in a bridal gown, clearly not expecting to stumble upon an old man’s bedchamber.

He welcomes the company, mute though it is. It’s lonely without John, and he isn’t at all good at taking care of himself.

Then one day, while he’s fiddling with his violin, plucking strings that need to be changed and wishing John was here to tell him to play something quiet, the door to the kitchen swings open. He looks up in idle curiosity, and John Watson is standing at the door. He’s the John from another day, and he stands there in the doorway until Sherlock finds his voice.

“John,” he says. He puts down the violin and stands on shaky legs, taking the time to soak in the sight of the other half of his heart.

John backs out through the door, and Sherlock follows, crossing the threshold into a neat-as-a-pin flat, oddly appointed with a skull on the mantel and anatomy notes pinned to a wall. There’s a quirky sort of Victorian wallpaper behind the sofa, and a walking stick against the door.

“Oxford or Cambridge?” asks the short man he’s facing – he doesn’t know his name, but he’s fascinated by his clear eyes and confident bearing.

“Oxford – but how…?”

“Know a bit about the human body?” asks the man.

“A bit – I’ve dissected a few.”

The man nods – obviously pleased. “Do you listen to loud music? Plan to bring women over all night?”

“No – and no, certainly not. I play the violin – classical.”

The man grins. He extends a hand to Sherlock. “John Watson – you can move in any time. Rent’s due on the first. The landlady is Mrs. Hudson – she’ll tell you she’s not the housekeeper but she’s really a lamb – though she hates to find body parts in the fridge.”

He sits on an over-stuffed chair to pull his shoes on, then limps to the door and picks up his cane. 

“I’m off to Bart’s – my friend Molly runs the morgue – she’s letting me have a look at a new one she’s just got in – partially mummified remains found in a storage unit.”

He picks up his keys, pulls one off the ring and tosses it to Sherlock. “There you go – I’ll be back in a couple hours and can help you move your things then.”

Sherlock is frozen in place, key in hand.

His things? Where are his things, anyway?

John’s gone out the door and he hears footsteps on the stairs, a pause, and steps back up again.

“Care to come?” John asks, poking his head in the door. “Might be interesting.”

Sherlock grins. He slips the key into his pocket and hurries down the stairs after John.

He pays no mind as the door swings shut behind him.

A balding man in a bespoke suit walks by the door and pauses to straighten the brass number placard until 221B is perfectly horizontal. He smiles in satisfaction, tips his hat to the landlady in the window, and walks unhurriedly away.


End file.
